CULTUREPHILE: PORTLAND ARTS

First Thursday Preview

What’s going on at the galleries?

Posted by: Graham Bell on Jun 01, 2010 at 11:00AM 2 Comments

After the Explosion by Bailey Winters

Do you like to get dressed up on the weekends and take in a bit of culture? Too bad. The real creative calendar markers know to wear their walking shoes and thick-rimmed fashionista art school glasses on the first Thursday of every month. Get a glimpse of all that Portland’s art galleries have to offer for June and then spend the rest of the summer being smug whenever anyone mentions an artist by name. Here are some good bets:

New American Art Union – Bailey Winters

If photo-realistic painting and revolutions are your thing, then you’re going to love Ambush: The Story of the TDA. Bailey Winters’ vivid images depict a fictional revolutionary group living on the West Coast during the early 2000s. Mixing cartoon-like scenery with highly-detailed figural imagery, these narrative pictures draw the viewer through the story and tell the tale of the people shown. Explanatory titles add back story to enhance the tableaux.

PDX Contemporary Art – Storm Tharp and Brad Adkins

Fresh from a successful showing at the Whitney Biennial, Storm Tharp’s new works are sure to be hot tickets on the local, national and international levels. His intense portraits capture the chaos of spreading ink within carefully controlled forms while his colorfield work hovers in between solid blocks and vaporous musings of hue.

At PDX Across the Hall, Brad Adkins presents a variety of new works that continue his interest in reasserting ordinary objects and their contexts. Referencing everything from household implements to his fellow artists, the artist takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to the manufactured art object.

Froelick Gallery – Two of a Kind

Showcasing works by several local artists, this exhibition pairs 17 photographers with 17 painters and asks them to create portraits of each other. The results explore the ways artists in different media approach the portrait genre and their fellow creative minds. Works include pieces by Laura Ross-Paul, Susan Seubert, Leiv Fagereng and Katherine Ace.

Blue Sky Gallery – Christine Osinski and Alejandro Cartajena

Christine Osinski’s black and white images of shoppers are not mere snapshots. They are quick images that probe the personalities of their subjects. Taken in the ubiquitous setting of the supermarkets, Osinski’s photographs capture private moments in the public sphere.

The photographs by Alejandro Cartajena find themselves exposing places usually overlooked by society. By highlighting the worn and abandoned areas of Mexico, Cartajena forces a reexamination of urban decay and the process of dilapidation.

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Tags: Portland Art, First Thursday

Jeff Jahn at Portland Art Museum

(On Thursday nights, PAM stays open til 8:00)

Posted by: Graham Bell on May 12, 2010 at 01:45PM 0 Comments

Dan Flavin neon sculpture, Untitled (To Donna)

The Portland Art Museum monthly series of talks featuring local arts personalities is an excellent way to get a new look at the museum’s collection. Whether you’ve been there one time, a hundred times or this is your very first visit, viewers of PAM’s vast array of work can always benefit from a new perspective.

Tomorrow night is the May installment of PAM’s Artist Talks Series. The talk begins at 6pm in the Hoffman Lobby at PAM, the $12 ($9 for seniors and students) ticket includes museum admission and is available at the Museum Box Office. Did you know that the Portland Art Museum is open until 8pm every Thursday and Friday? New Thursday Resolution: Art first. Drinks after.

This month, local curator and creative busybody Jeff Jahn illuminates some of the subtleties behind Dan Flavin’s 1971 Untitled (To Donna) 2 and Anne Truitt’s Bonne, an acrylic on wood work from 1963. Jahn, fresh from his integral role in the Donald Judd Delegated Fabrication conference and exhibition, will lead a discussion of Flavin’s fluorescent fixtures and Truitt’s proto-installation piece.

The evolution of installation art has muddied the divisions between sculpture, painting and the traditional notion of the gallery space. With this in mind, Jahn hopes to tease out why he believes that these two pieces are among the best representations of post-war art in Portland’s collection. And, as the co-founder of PORT, this city’s premiere critical arts blog (Culturephile not included, of course), you can bet he’ll make a good argument. The talk is free for members or with admission to the Museum. A happy hour with complimentary food and drink follows.

In the upcoming months, make sure to keep an eye out for additional talks by local creative minds including: exceptional artistic talent and Whitney Biennial selection Storm Tharp (6/10), photographer and Blue Sky Board of Directors President Christopher Rauschenberg (7/8), artist and PNCA mainstay Nan Curtis (8/12) and Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery curator Stephanie Snyder (9/9). Attendance is limited to the first 60 on the list, so mark your calendars!

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Tags: Art, Portland Art

Last Thursday in April

galleries in garages in alleys

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Apr 29, 2010 at 08:50AM 0 Comments

Feeling adventurous? If you don’t require your art to be presented in a Pearl District white box, taking a trip down a couple of alleys off NE Alberta will likely prove rewarding this evening. Spring has sprung when Last Thursday swings into action. Thread through the vendors and buskers to find the south alley off NE Alberta between 26th and 27th.
Appendix Project Space kicks off it’s 2010 programming season with a new partnership with Little Field Gallery (another gallery in another garage off another, nearby, alley) and a new performance space, HAY BATCH!, curated by Portland artist Matthew Green.

At Appendix find an installation by Nathan Dinihanian and Molly Cooney-Mesker. Nathan Dinihanian is a site-specific furniture designer and fabricator whose interests reside in the conjunction where place and space meet. Molly Cooney-Mesker’s work investigates the intersections of social and physical space and how pathways change or are determined by guidelines and social patterns.

And at Little Field Gallery FOR REAL! is a show of work-on-computer exploring viral replication, digital image curation, pixel work, and interactivity with work by Tabor Robak, DUMP.FM, Brad Troemel (The Jogging), Zachary Davis, Josh Pavlacky, and Future Death Toll.

Both are open from 6-11 PM. At 8 PM at HAY BATCH!, a rowdy quartet of young Portland artist-instigators (
Matthew Clifford Green, Sean Joseph Patrick Carney, Michael Reinsch, Eric Gibbons) bring
JOSEPH’S BOYZ: BOYZ NIGHT OUT. Stand back.

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Tags: Portland Art, Last Thursday

First Thursday April

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Apr 01, 2010 at 09:23AM 0 Comments

LESS
Victor Maldonado
Froelick Gallery
714 NW Davis
Reception April 1 5-8 PM

Recently back from showing at EAST/WEST BERLIN, Maldonado has been thinking about border crossings, the immigrant experience, and growing up as an indigenous man, a Mexican-American man, and assimilation. For Maldonado these “Green Screen” paintings—each representing the exact dimensions of one of the televisions that have been in his life—speak to his experience of learning English from watching American television and what that means for the process of acculturation with Maldonado a case study of a broader immigrant experience.

Higher Ground
Karl Burkheimer
DOPPLER PDX
625 NW Everett Street #109
Reception April 1 5:30-9 PM

Burkheimer goes vertical, investigating “his interest in the space, real or perceived, between the object of contemplation and the object of utility. Using the gallery as his architectural reference, Burkheimer created objects within the space as points of exchange with the public.” Department Head at OCAC, Burkheimer in the last year was curated into the Call + Response exhibition at MoCC and co-curated the one-night exhibition Open House Opening.

New Work
Julia Mangold

Selected Drawings
Donald Judd

Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th

Leach shows Julia Mangold’s wax and graphite-coated sculptures with a group of related graphite and wax drawings on paper and board. It will be interesting to see how these works have a conversation with a selection of drawings by Donald Judd also on show.

The Great Recession
Michael Mandiberg
Feldman Gallery at PNCA (1241 NW Johnson)
Reception April 1 6:30 PM

Exploring the psychic implications of the current economic difficulties as well as “late Capitalism, gold hoarding, and the end of an empire.” He says of his work: “I am an a appropriationist at heart. I derive visual inspiration from the internet, conceptual art, design, the end of print, and the dying American empire.”

EXPO
Colin Matthes
IGLOO
625 NW Everett #102

For his first solo exhibition in the Northwest, Milwaukee-based artist Colin Matthes is doing a short-term residency at Igloo gallery, culminating in a site-specific installation of scavenged scrap wood and found objects with high tech gizmos and survival gear to “create a lighthearted, yet poignant installation referencing stage sets, flea markets, unrealized innovations, and trade work. The installation will focus on creating an environment that invites the viewer to imagine small victories in hostile locations while encouraging reflection of how our own lifestyles contribute to creating these dynamics.”

working with doubt
Josh Smith
Manuel Izquierdo Gallery at PNCA
1241 NW Johnson
Reception Thursday April 1, 6-9 PM

FOG: A Spring Group Show
Artur Silva, Calvin Ross Carl, Grant Hottle, John Berry, Laura Mackin, Lisa Berry, Lisa Kowalski
Half/Dozen Gallery
625 NW Everett #111
Opening Reception April 1 6-9 PM

“A fog-laden photo by Lisa Berry (the show’s namesake), the repurposed home videos of Laura Mackin and the playful use of interior/exterior spaces by Grant Hottle all welcome the new season with hesitant, but open arms. Whether it is the vaguely familiar mountains mirrored in new work by Calvin Ross Carl, the scribbled paint strokes by Lisa Kowalski, or the playful assemblage by Artur Silva, this show will make you want to go outside and breath a chest full of fresh air. John Berry’s subtly crafted linocut may be the quiet kid in the corner not yet ready to venture out and greet the season.”

Empirical Geodism
Chelsea Lynn Linehan and Nathanael Thayer Moss
Tractor
328 NW Broadway
Opening April 1 6-10 PM

“A sensory experience of visual and sonic stimulations,” with new paintings, paper sculptures, drawings, and a collaborative light/sound sculpture.

[caption id=“attachment_5415” align=“alignleft” width=“430” caption=" Toshiko Okanoue, Noon Song, 1954. Photolithographic collage."][/caption]

Drop of Dreams
Toshiko Okanoue
Charles A. Hartman Fine Art
134 NW 8th
Reception April 1 5:30-8:30 PM

A show of original surrealist photolithographic collages from the early 1950s by the Japanese artist, Toshiko Okanoue. "Okanoue’s collages, created when she was in her mid-20s in post-war Japan, were constructed largely from American picture magazines such as Life and Vogue. Mining these rich visual sources of American popular culture, Okanoue’s beautiful surrealist imagery expresses the dreams of a young female artist in Japan standing at the crossroads of events and movements of enormous historic significance.

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Tags: Portland Art, First Thursday

First Thursday March

too much good

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Mar 04, 2010 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Portland has come out swinging in the field of art for 2010 with strong shows right and left, from regional masters to intriguing visitors, excellent group shows…and March looks just as good. Here are some shows you might hit.

Marker
Marie Watt
PDX Contemporary Art
925 NW Flanders

Show of new work by Watt including “Trunk,” this incredible, sinuous cedar sculpture.

Clouds
Lucinda Parker
Laura Russo
805 NW 21st

Regional abstract expressionist powerhouse and longtime arts educator Parker with a show of new paintings inspired by the weather. Parker gives a talk Saturday, March 27, at 11 AM.

Letters from Switzerland
Melody Owen
Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th

“For Letters from Switzerland, using the tools and media of the Swiss-originated Dadaists, Owen created a precise and strange group of collages, examining feelings of dislocation and disconnection. Featuring bisected animals spilling flowers from their guts, and hotels sprouting roots that can’t find purchase, these works allude to the deracinated experience of the contemporary traveler.”

Laurie Danial
Froelick Gallery
714 NW Davis

Abstract paintings by Danial that feature tracings, structures, transparencies, the built and the organic.

Grassland Alphabet
Seth Nehil
In House Gallery
625 NE Everett St. #106

“…calligraphic exercises – letter-forms constructed from waves and clusters of marks. I imagined a field of wheat attempting to form itself into words, a mute landscape swelling in the wind, blades of grass arranging and aligning themselves.”

Constrain to Vertical
Brenda Mallory
DOPPLER PDX
625 NW Everett Street #109

Fabric wall pieces inspired by stacks of UPS “end-of-day” barcodes + Agnes Martin.

GRIP, GRASP, GROPE, AND FONDLE
Lucas Murgida
Autzen Gallery
2nd Floor PSU Neuberger Hall, Room 205, 724 SW Harrison

SF artist Murgida makes work through (and addressing) his work … conducting “research” while employed as cabinetmaking, restaurant work, locksmithing, and now yoga instruction. Artist talk/performance at opening.

Wrecking Crüe
IGLOO
625 NW Everett #102

Titled cute, this is a group show of work by Jordan Tull, Josh Smith, Salvatore Reda, Joshua Pavlacky, and Jeff Jahn (like the j-alliteration…should Salvatore change his first name?). Bullet points from the quite poetic statement:

+ constructed space
+ structural invention
+ half-made/half-undone
+ hypershapes
+ blueprints and Outer Space
+ rendering philosophical material from impulsive architecture

3X_PWN_TRANZ
Future Death Toll
Tractor
328 NW Broadway

sometimes when you pick up the pwn, you don’t know who is on the other line.
sometimes when you pick up the pwn, you do all the talking.
sometimes when you pick up the pwn, the pwn does all the talking for you.

I’m into the idea of “evidence of a past or future mission to transmit” as well as the machines of communication.

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Tags: Portland Art, First Thursday

First Thursday February

it’s a knockout

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Feb 03, 2010 at 12:00PM 0 Comments

This is a month that promises a wealth of remarkable exhibitions including sharp-looking group shows at both Elizabeth Leach Gallery and Half/Dozen, Oregon Painting Society at Manuel Izquierdo at PNCA, plus new work by Jaq Chartier (Leach), Bean Finneran (PDX Contemporary), and something intriguing from Lindsay Aucoin at Tractor. And that’s just the exhibitions opening on Thursday! Receptions generally start at 6 or 6:30 PM. Websites have details. Stay tuned for Friday openings.

SuperNatural
Jaq Chartier
Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th
The gallery, as I do, calls Chartier’s work both lush and minimal. Like test strips or views through a microscope, this is work that is quietly beautiful.

Re-Present
Pat Boas, Adam Chapman, Isaac Layman, Joe Park, Xiaoze Xie
Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th
According to the gallery, “the artists in Re-Present consider the differences between representation and perception.” Boas’ work I respect very much, recontextualizing the everyday info-stream via excision, and Layman I was introduced to by the recent show at the Archer Gallery. I’m perhaps most interested to see Chapman’s video drawing portraits.

Shadowgut
Oregon Painting Society
Manuel Izquierdo Gallery
825 NW 13th
I don’t know much about what this arts collective is doing for this show, (Derek Franklin says its the dark opposite of their Autzen show) but their recent exhibition at Autzen was widely lauded. They’re adventurous, smart, and surprising.

Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now
The Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space
1241 NW Johnson
Sweeping exhibition of posters, photographs, ephemera capturing over 40 years of international social activism. Graphically powerful reminder of stakes and role that art/design has played in agitating for social change.

The Quadratic Logogram of Almost Everything: The Democracy of the Contemporary Art Object
Half/Dozen
625 NW Everett St. #111
Excellent group of artists, smart curator, and interesting premise, I’m going to dig into more fully in short order. I wouldn’t miss this group show curated by Derek Franklin with work by David Corbett, Alex Felton, Kristan Kennedy, Sterling Lawrence.

Incidence and Pattern
Bean Finneran
PDX Contemporary Art
925 NW Flanders
“For the past seven years I have been working with a single elemental form, a curve as a meditation upon multiplicity in nature."

T9
Lindsay Aucoin
Tractor
328 NW Broadway
“I’m interested in word play, idea play, picture play- anything that interrupts the way we normally see things. … T9 is an abstract look at technology as a means of communication.”

Inland Empires
Tyler Kohlhoff
Tribute Gallery
328 NW Broadway #117
“Inland Empires focuses on the transitional habitats of the Interior West. In a series of two studies, the artist leverages anti-narrative to explore space as found artifacts of the abandoned." It’s a first PDX show for this artist of what look to be lovely , moody photos.

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Tags: Portland Art, First Thursday

Tidal

opening at Disjecta on Friday

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Jan 21, 2010 at 02:00PM 0 Comments

Tidal is going to be the Disjecta (8371 N Interstate) exhibition we all remember 10 years from now. Jenene Nagy has the chops to make something remarkable with the alternative art space’s expansive gallery, and I’m glad she has the chance. Opening Friday, January 22, with a reception from 6-10 PM, Tidal is Nagy’s latest in a series of ambitious installations that have included (locally) “False Flat” (2007) at Linfield Gallery and “s/plit” (2008) at the Portland Art Museum.

Nagy’s installtions are often wall paintings of monochrome forms that spill off the wall onto shaped planes, conflating painting/wall/sculpture. Her means are made evident, especially the exposed 2×4′s that provide structure…no illusion here…and no preciousness, these are humble, utilitarian materials. She has in the past referred to her work as relating to stage sets (an earlier piece called “Sky Prop” as I recall was a grouping of pink jagged shapes on 2×4′s like giant matte lollipops, but meant, apparently, to be cloud-like props). In her studio pieces, it’s clear she’s experimenting with the the traditional means and results of painting and sculpture where a canvas sags and twists like the fabric that it is, minimalist paintings are freestanding, and sculptures and paintings talk to one another.

All of this is to say Jenene Nagy’s already working nationally, having just done an installation in Ohio after previously showing in LA with an upcoming residency also in LA, and she may not be ours forever. Go see this show.

The artist’s statement: “Using materials most commonly associated with construction, Tidal transforms the viewing arena into a pared-down space for possibility. Perched high in the rafters of the expansive gallery space, the piece challenges viewers’ expectations of interior and exterior, the spectacle and the mundane. Through the use of drywall and 2×4s, the work is linked to the built space of the gallery, literally merging with its makeup. With its jagged shape and electric pink paint, Tidal encroaches and engulfs; it is an invasion. It shifts the understanding of our physical scale in relationship to the space, de-familiarizing what we understand and expect of both the built and natural environment. Here, the commonplace becomes a super-phenomenon, evoking a violent beauty.”

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Tags: Art, Portland Art

Good Night, Sweet Princess

Fontanelle to close

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Jan 14, 2010 at 05:00PM 0 Comments

I usually don’t want to write about gallery closings. I see the value in summing up, but if anything, I think the media are generally too enthusiastic about documenting the demise of a dynamic cultural enterprise. And yet, I regret perhaps not doing more to sum up the work of one of Portland’s more important independent galleries, TILT, when it closed (or rather transformed into the itinerant curatorial enterprise, TILT Export).

So it is that I celebrate the very good work of Leslie Miller and Jess Fogel at Fontanelle Gallery (205 SW Pine) . Fontanelle will close at the end of January. And just to get nostalgic for a moment, this is also the location that Elizabeth Leach Gallery inhabited well before Leach established the permanent Pearl District home for her gallery and the location where Eva Lake curated some fine, fine shows for Chambers Gallery before its northward move.

Fontanelle may be remembered for an illustration/figurative aesthetic that riffed on a melange of Chris Johanson/Carson Ellis/Marcel Dzama with a healthy queer thread. Mostly it will be remembered for showing work that wasn’t finding exhibition elsewhere. I’m particularly grateful to Fontanelle for debuting exhibitions by Midori Hirose/Josh Orion Kermiet and Oregon Painting Society. And I’m looking forward to seeing the book collaboration between Fontanelle and Mark Searcy document the gallery’s year-and-a-half of exhibitions. Fontanelle goes out with a bang with a closing party Friday, January 22, 7-9 PM w/ DJ Party Martyr.

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Tags: Art, Portland Art, Galleries

Transference

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Jan 07, 2010 at 12:00PM 0 Comments

Transference. Ethan Rose and Andy Paiko. 2009. Museum of Contemporary Craft.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Transference. Ethan Rose and Andy Paiko. 2009. Museum of Contemporary Craft.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Holy.

I’m not going to use that word every day. But it’s the one that the sound of “Transference” brings to mind.

I’ve been thinking about how the secular humanist can miss out on opportunities to convene around music with transcendent possibilities (and/or joining in choral performance of same) by bypassing the great front doors of the church. I’ve been thinking that singing with other people is elevating. And I’ve been surprised recently by occasions when music has briefly lifted me out of now, pressing the pause button on everything but itself.

It is this sensation of a profound and elevating peace walled off from the rest of the world that sound artist Ethan Rose and glass artist Andy Paiko have created with “Transference,” a room-sized armonica at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. It is arresting when one’s eyes are closed, and only more so when one opens one’s eyes to see the 37 large clear glass bell jars rotating on wall and pedestal in the Museum’s ground floor gallery, bell jars that Paiko and Rose report very nearly tuned themselves to the key of F (with only a little coaxing). Delicate, twisting, armatures connected to hidden timed switching mechanisms touch tiny cloths to the edge of the glass (as a finger on the edge of a wine glass), generating the rich tones that swell, sustain, overlap, and fade away.

Tonight, Reed Wallsmith and Joe Cunningham, two tremendously sensitive and magical saxophonists (of Blue Cranes and Better Homes & Gardens), play with/to the sounds of “Transference” during First Thursday from 6-7:30 PM. “Transference” closes this weekend. Please see it.

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Tags: Art, Portland Art, Crafts, Sound Art

First Thursday January

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Jan 07, 2010 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Marco Buti, from the Ficar series, mezzotint, 15.5″ × 11.75″, 2002. image via Froelick Gallery

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Marco Buti, from the Ficar series, mezzotint, 15.5″ × 11.75″, 2002. image via Froelick Gallery

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Megan Murphy, INEFFABLE, 2009. digital transparency, mirror, glass, acrylic, and oil paint. 22.5″ × 36″. image via PDX Contemporary Art

View Slideshow » Illustration:

John Mann, Untitled (sea level), 2009. digital c-print, 24″ × 30″. image via PDX Contemporary Art

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Scott Wolniak, Improvised Grass (detail), 2008. Sculpture – Paper, junk mail, studio debris, glue, wire, and tape. Dimensions variable. image via Chambers Gallery

Interiors: An Invitational Group Exhibit
Froelick Gallery
714 NW Davis
First Thursday Reception: January 7, 5–8 PM

Interiors here means both shelter and psyche, with selected works by artists including Vito Acconci (photo documentation of his “Seedbed” performance), Marco Buti’s remarkable prints, and work by Isabelle Scurry Chapman, Joe Deal, Matthew Dennison, Raymond Depardon, Walker Evans, Benny Fountain, Jeremiah Goodman, Shelley Jordan, Kevin Kadar, André Kertész, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Susan Seubert, Jeff Stuhr, Lli Wilburn, “and a selection of very odd vernacular photographs.”

Glass House, an interactive installation
Jennifer Jacobs
Tractor (328 NW Broadway #114)

Exploring a city is like walking through a hall of mirrors. The surfaces of the urban environment are tuned to reflect elements of your personality back to you with varying degrees of distortion. Observation is central to the flow of power in the city; It feeds into our personal vanities and controls us through our awareness of a detached surveillance. Our modified reflections cause us to engage in a form of self-evaluation and censure. There is a paradoxical relationship with the urban image of ourselves in that we wish to be observed, yet we are conscious of the control this observation exerts over us. Glasshouse examines the contention between narcissism and self-imposed surveillance. The piece itself is an interactive projection of glittering structures resembling city skyscrapers. As the viewer explores these structures, they impose a distorted portrait back upon them in imposing scale. The city’s movement responds to the flow of people throughout the space. The longer the viewer progresses through the city, the more their image is echoed around them. After the viewer leaves, their presence remains, gradually fading to be replaced with the images of others who follow through their own path of exploration. The audience is caught between self-spectacle and self-consciousness, uncertain of their control over the space, but implicitly aware of their presence within it.

John Mann, Untitled (sea level), 2009. digital c-print, 24″ × 30″. image via PDX Contemporary Art

Folded in Place
John Mann
PDX Across the Hall (925 NW Flanders)

Meanwhile, at PDX Across the Hall, John Mann deals with exteriors or landscapes through a series of photos of map-based constructions/deconstructions that look sensational in their low-res online glory so I can’t wait to see in real life.

The photographs in this series are informed by the varied ways that photography, mapping, drawing and sculpture have each tried to describe the landscape. By incorporating each of these methods, Folded in Place highlights the abstraction of the landscape traditionally offered by these means, while creating a tangible photographic “place” in each image that is occupied by a mapped construction. The images therefore provide precise photographic and mapped information while at the same time offering an abstraction of the landscape itself.

Megan Murphy, INEFFABLE, 2009. digital transparency, mirror, glass, acrylic, and oil paint. 22.5″ × 36″. image via PDX Contemporary Art

Porcelain
Megan Murphy
PDX Contemporary (925 NW Flanders">

In Porcelain and Other Works, Megan Murphy uses historical events and locations to construct an understanding of how our contemporary selves and culture are informed by the subjectivity of recorded history. From photographs that she has taken on location—places that are often remote and imbued with dramatic, emotional histories—Murphy produces a transparent image that she then mounts between a mirror and a sheet of glass. Then begins a process of building up and removing dozens of layers of paint and text, imbuing the paint with an internal luminosity while replicating the effects of time: actions once taken and now remembered by how they are revealed through the progression and reflection of time.

Scott Wolniak, Improvised Grass (detail), 2008. Sculpture – Paper, junk mail, studio debris, glue, wire, and tape. Dimensions variable. image via Chambers Gallery

Patterning
Scott Wolniak
Chambers Gallery (916 NW Flanders)

I’m fascinated by number, rhythm, pattern especially those naturally occurring (closet Pythagorean that I am). And so I’m interested in Scott Wolniak’s Patterning at Chambers.

Patterning unites several projects by Scott Wolniak that utilize repetition and rhythm to examine structures found in studio art practice and everyday life. Exhibited projects include two sculptural installations built from found items and household debris entitled Weeds and Grass, the intricate graphite drawing series Untitled Tie-Dyes, the bright Simulated Sunprints, and the single-channel video installation Musical Notes in Harmony with the Attuned Healing Colors. Together, the series explore patterns – found or created – as concept, system, and compositional template.

Play for Keeps
Group Show
Tribute Gallery (328 NW Broadway #117)

Guest curators Elizabeth Lamb and Chloe Gallagher have pulled together works on paper by a national roster of artists to explore “the often underrated importance of play.”

Featured artists include Jon MacNair from Baltimore, MD whose playful yet eerie works of ink on paper have earned him a national following. Joshua Witten, hailing from Fort Collins, IN, works in a variety of media and possesses an impressive mastery of his bold, graphic style. Mixed media artist Patrick Haemmerlein from Los Angeles builds arresting urban images from the ground up using his own photography and source material. Ashley Sloan, a local Portland artist, will be exhibiting clever, thought-provoking graphite works. And, Max Kauffman, hailing from Denver, CO, whose colorful, folkloric works have been exhibited at a number of prominent national galleries, will also be featured. The exhibit will also include works by Brett Anderson, Huy Nguyen, Garric Simonsen, Angela Dawn, Breanne Rupp, Megan Marie Myers, Brian Costello, Jackie Bos, Karri Dieken, Stephan Ferreira, Mark Colman, Heidi Elise Wirz, Coco Papy, Sally Gilmore, Mark Olwick, Louise Krampien and Cara Tomlinson.

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Tags: Art, Portland Art, Galleries, tribute gallery, tractor, froelick gallery, First Thursday, chambers gallery,

Re:PORT

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Jan 05, 2010 at 10:00PM 0 Comments

Jeff Jahn puts together a show of work by artists, writers, and photographers who have contributed to arts blog PORT. Re:PORT opens with a preview Wednesday from 6-9 PM at artists’ collective Gallery 114 (1100 NW Glisan).

The show features work by Amy Bernstein, Arcy Douglass, Megan Driscoll, Sarah Henderson, Jeff Jahn, Nicky Kriara, Jenene Nagy, Jascha Owens, Ryan Pierce, Alex Rauch, and Gary Wiseman.

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Tags: Art, Portland Art, Galleries, gallery 114, port

It’s A Wrap

Lists and more lists

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Jan 04, 2010 at 07:00PM 0 Comments

What’s that? You have yet to write your Best of 2009 list? That’s okay, the Motion Picture Academy doesn’t get around to it for ages.

Me, I could write a 2009 best-of list or….I could link to the lists of others and call it a day. I find the end of year round-up thrilling (whatta year!), overwhelming (I need to go stand in front of Robert Irwin’s disk at PAM and clear my mind), and kind of melancholy as there were many good shows I didn’t have time or energy to tell you about. I hope you saw them anyway.

For the Comprehensive List of Lists, we have to thank 16 Miles which links the best of the best-of (and worst-of) lists nationally from Christopher Knight in El Lay to Peter Schjeldahl in New York.

Closer to home, Jeff Jahn at PORT farmed out the list writing, creating a survey which, among other things called out Ruth Ann Brown as MVP for her Couture series at New American Art Union.

Meanwhile, Richard Speer at Willamette Week does his own list making, hitting a number of the shows and venues I deeply appreciated, not least being Damien Gilley and Ethan Rose at Gallery HOMELAND. And thanks for the nod for Culturephile, Richard. We try.

Artist/curator/critic TJ Norris puts unBLOGGED to sleep, Fifty-two Pieces wrapped, Barry Johnson ended his long tenure at the Oregonian, Bob Hicks wrote about what he read, not what he saw in 09 on Art Scatter, while Eva Lake, the Mercury, the O, and Just Out skipped year-end wrap ups.

So I shouldn’t feel too bad about skipping it right?

Lazy Year End Round-Up (a list that may grow):
Jenene Nagy and Josh Smith, Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner, Oregon Painting Society, Half/Dozen, Gallery HOMELAND’s East/West Project Berlin, OPENWIDEpdx, Bandage a Knife (Linda Austin/Seth Nehil), Spare Room Collective’s 100th Reading, PDX Contemporary, Fourteen30, Rose McCormick’s Grande Ronde, Pat Boas at Marylhurst Art Gym, Appendix Project Space (and collective), Worksound, Damien Gilley, Transference, STOCK, Karl Burkheimer, PICA’s TBA 09 visual arts at Washington High esp. robbinschilds, Nine Gallery, Jordan Tull, Peaches & Bats, Victoria Haven, Tractor, Nowhere at Disjecta, Matt King at Fourteen30, Victor Maldonado, Open House, Liam Drain, Kelly Rauer, Valentine’s, Brian Lund at PNCA, Stephen Slappe, D.E. May, Ben Stagl, The M.O.S.T. Remixed, John Brodie’s Shop for a Month, Bethany Ides…

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Tags: Portland Art, Galleries